Why Delegating The Marketing Of Your IT Business Will Be The Death Of You

I want to take a moment to recognize a very dangerous “fantasy” shared by many of the small IT business owners I work with. Consequently, this is a fantasy shared by many small business owners and NOT just IT companies, but I find it more rampant in this industry because most IT business owners have “technician” mindsets. Plus, they are handicapped not only by a lack of sales and marketing skills – they have a deep distain for it, and believe it is confusing, difficult and degrading work that is a necessary evil of running a business.

Therefore, they have a fantasy that there is some marketing or sales wizard out there available for hire that will ride in on a white horse and “save” them from this painful responsibility of marketing and selling - someone who will “do it all” for them and not explain what they are doing or why they are doing it…just bring in the clients so they (the business owner) can sit quietly behind their desk servicing customers and managing the day to day operations of the business.

This is pure fantasy and if you think this way, you will never be able to build a highly successful, fast-growth organization. That’s an employee mentality. If you think that way, you ought to go and get a job working for someone else who will own that responsibility and (rightfully) take the lion’s share of the profits while you fritter away your time fulfilling on the orders they’ve generated.

Sorry to be the cold, harsh slap of reality, but as a business owner, YOUR #1 role and responsibility is to make sure that business makes a profit. Obviously a HUGE part of making that happen your ability to market and promote your business so you attract and sell highly-profitable clients. Without that ability, all you are is another technician scrambling over whatever referral or lucky break comes your way – a perfect recipe for being broke.

Now let me be clear on one thing; I’m not suggesting that you never hire sales or marketing people to help you with the execution of your marketing strategy, and I’m certainly not suggesting that you never hire  consultant or agency to ‘short cut’ your path to success. I’m 100% for all of this. What I’m talking about specifically is completely delegating the responsibility. Here’s a mantra I repeat over and over again to clients:

“Master the strategy, delegate the execution.”

The problem is most don’t want to figure out the strategy which includes determining the markets you are targeting, the core message you want to communicate, your competitive position in the marketplace (USP), the price points, guarantees, and most important, the processes and systems you need to put in place for consistently generating a quality lead, following up on it and closing the sale.

And how can you possibly know if an employee, marketing consultant or agency is doing a good job UNLESS you have some type of foundation by which you can judge them? This is why so many ad agencies stay in business; they are playing to the ignorance, ego and laziness of the owner. They design beautiful looking brochures and flyers that make the business owner feel proud about the “image” of their business, but bring in ZERO clients, sales or profits. Agencies can ride that for a LONG time before an owner finally wakes up and seeks out another ‘wizard’ who will sing the siren song of taking all the responsibility of marketing off their shoulders, where the same process is repeated.

This sets up a cycle of hopping from one guru and ad agency to the next, writing checks all along the way and getting nowhere fast.

A friend of mine, Richard Rossi, President of EMI (a 20 million plus organization) has a great saying about marketing. He says, “I don’t need to know how to write a great marketing campaign, but I DO have to know the fundamentals of what it takes to create one so I can determine the difference between a good one and a bad one.” While he is delegating some of strategy to his staff, he is 1,000% involved in monitoring and overseeing everything that goes on.

And finally, I believe this desire to completely delegate the responsibility of acquiring clients (marketing) is grounded in an emotional dislike or hang up about asking people to give you money, whether that’s in a one-on-one sales situation or marketing communication; and if you aren’t confident enough to directly ask someone to give you money in exchange for the goods and services you sell, then you simply don’t have what it takes to be truly successful in business.

For a free CD that outlines the 9 steps involved in successfully implementing a marketing plan for your IT business, go to: www.technologymarketingtoolkit.com

Posted via email from Robin Robin's Managed IT Services Sales Training